6
Within a few days all was restored to calmness in the city of São Paulo de Loanda. Don Jeronymo did make his peace with the Jesuits; the excommunication of Don Francisco was raised, and that unhappy fidalgo took ship for Brazil, glad, I trow, to see the last of Angola. João de Velloria was released from prison and given again the rank of captain-general, that he had had formerly. Don João de Mendoça also was relieved of all restraints, although he did choose to remain in seclusion. And I, too, was freed from my house arrest. A lieutenant of Don Jeronymo’s bore me a message from the governor, saying that I was to make ready for a voyage to São Tomé, and would receive my more specific instructions from Don Jeronymo in a short while.
The matter of the inquest now demanded a disposal. But this, which I had feared so greatly, proved in the event to be a hollow formality. Such great affairs had taken place in the city that the slaying of an unruly mariner, even if he be a duke’s son, had become a trifle, forgotten by everyone but the aggrieved Don Gaspar. And though I had no longer the hand of Don João raised above me for a shield, yet were my services required by the new governor Don Jeronymo, and so I could not be expended in such vengeful doings.
Thus a court was summoned, before a judicial officer of the faction of Don Jeronymo, Don Pantaleao de Mendes, much wrinkled and glum of face. The thing was done in an hour. Don Gaspar rose and denounced me for slaying his brother, saying I had coveted certain valuable goods of his, and reminding Don Pantaleao of the dead man’s high ancestry. I spoke my piece. Then Pinto Cabral did rise, and Pedro Faleiro, and Mendes Oliveira, all my companions of the voyage, and say how it was that the late Caldeira de Rodrigues had attempted to force his way into the longboat, and had been kept from it by my quickness and valor, to which they all swore by solemn oath. And that was all.
“Death by misadventure,” Don Pantaleao decreed, and assessed the costs of the inquest against the plaintiff, and the case was closed. But as we left the room, Don Gaspar did pluck my sleeve, and hiss and scowl, and vow his vengeance.
“I am not done with you,” said he.
“I beg you,” said I, “fry other fish, and let me be.” And put him from my mind.
The upheaval being ended, I had me my dinner with Senhor Barbosa. There was a fine house at his disposal while he was in São Paulo de Loanda, and we were served by a multitude of slaves, some in good liveries, for Barbosa was ever a man who cherished fine dress. We ate splendidly of many meats, partridge and pheasant both, and the wild boar called here mgalo, and little oysters of a great succulence, and the strange fruits of the land, such as the mandonyns and beynonas and ozeghes. All this was cooked most elegantly in the European style, with fine sauces, and accompanied by a plenitude of excellent wines of Portugal and the Canaries. I did stuff myself shamelessly like one who has been long in desert lands, though Senhor Barbosa was himself content but to taste a trifle here and a trifle there, the merest of morsels.
I heard from him, at this grand feast, of some doings in the world: such that Drake was still harassing the shipping of King Philip. “He has gone into the port of Coruna in Spain, and destroyed a new Armada that was under construction,” said Barbosa. “After which, he took up with Don Antonio, that is the pretender to the throne of Portugal, and landed with him at Lisbon, intending to establish him as king.”
“Brave Sir Francis! But to what result?”
“Ah,” said Barbosa, “very little, for we Portugals seem not eager to die to have back our former dynasty, and the expedition did fail. Now Drake lies under disgrace in England, the Queen being angry at him for having provoked King Philip so, and for not having succeeded at what he began. He is off raiding the Azores and the Spanish coast, and fears to return home.”
“He is much mistreated. And what else is the news?”
There had been, he said, another great voyage by Thomas Candish, who had sailed around the world commencing in Anno 1586. I knew somewhat of this Candish, who was of the Suffolk gentry, and was trustworthily said to be one of the crudest and least loving captains ever to take ship. Barbosa told me that he had sailed from Plymouth with five vessels some two years past, and had raided Brazil, attacking the town of Santos by surprise when its people were at Mass, and taking everyone prisoner within the church. “Yet this invading was a failure,” said Barbosa, “owing to the negligence of Candish’s deputy in charge of the attack, one Captain Cocke—”
“Cocke?” I burst in, feeling an angry hammering of my heart at the hearing of the name. “A small sour-faced man, is he, with one eye askew?”
“That I know not, for I never saw the man. During this time I was at Rio de Janeiro.”
“Tell me what negligences he did work.”
“Whilst he was in possession of Santos,” Barbosa said, “he paid no heed to the Indians of the town, who did carry out from it everything in it, all kinds of necessaries and provisions, leaving the place bare. So that the English found themselves shortly in extreme want of victual, worse furnished than when they had come into the town, and after five weeks were forced to quit the place.”
“It sounds much like the Cocke I knew, that abandoned me on a desert isle four years back, and sundered me thereby from all the life I led.”
“Ah, so that is why the color rises to your face at his name, and anger enters your eye!”
“I wish scarce any man ill, except this one Cocke. Who I see still thrives, and marauds in American waters, and does carry himself as foolish and foul as ever.”
“Perhaps no longer,” replied Barbosa. “For under the command of Candish this entire fleet proceeded south to Magellan’s strait, but it was now past the season for navigating that region, owing to the delay at Santos, and the English ships were scattered by extreme storms. We heard no more of them thereafter. So perhaps your foe Captain Cocke lies at the bottom of the Southern Sea.”
“I would sooner have had God blow him to Africa,” I said, “and waft him into this harbor of Angola, and give him into my hands.” And I curved my fingers most fearsomely, thinking what joy it would be to have them around the throat of Abraham Cocke. Which strong feelings gave me great surprise, for I am not usually of so vengeful a humor: but it must have been Barbosa’s generous pouring of the wines that had set me into such a fever of hatred.
Of worldly events, the making of wars and the changing of princes, Barbosa could impart little that was recent, owing that he had been in remote colonial regions these past two years. But there was some news for telling. He had heard that there had happened a vast coming and going of Popes, no less than four of them in that time, one reigning a mere twelve days. But that mattered little to me.
There was strife, too, in Spain, where the people of Aragon had rebelled against King Philip, but had been put down by Castilian troops. Whatever distressed Spaniards did give me keen pleasure, but I did not say that to Barbosa. In England the Queen still reigned most gloriously, though her treasury was hard pressed for funds, on account of the expenses of maintaining armies in the Netherlands and in Brittany to keep the ambitions of Spain in check. There were, he said, a good many burnings and hangings for reasons of religion in England still, and those who died were not only Catholics who did intrigue against the Queen, but even some Protestants who had gone too far in the Puritan direction, and called for the abolition of the bishops. To speak against the Church of England from either direction now was deemed sedition, if Barbosa told me true; and I think he did, for these holy slaughters were, I believe, as repugnant to him as to me.